Saturday, May 30, 2009

Here is the email that notified them of their official recognition being yanked. Liberty "University's" clubs and student organizations policy reads like the standard boilerplate most actual institutions of higher learning have that is intended to keep radical, fringe, and criminal groups and cults off campus. No university want to be seen having its very own chapter of the Klu Klux Klan or an officially sanctioned wing of the Crips gang on campus. But we are talking here of the Democratic Party, you know, the guys who won the last presidential election, so you have to wonder about the kind of narrowminded, misinformed intolerance of points of view that are at even the slightest variance from their own expressed here:

But then the story got some press and the "university" back pedaled a bit, saying the club could still meet on campus and be an unofficial organization, it just wouldn't be recognized by the school. Then things got a bit worse for them when Americans United for the Separation of Chuch and State, a group that monitors church-state connections, especially organizations that seek tax-exempt status as non-political religious groups, asked the IRS to look into Liberty "University" like they did with Rev. Jerry Falwell back in the 80s when his group lost its tax-exempt status for a few years.

“Dear President Falwell,We are deeply sorry that you are such a complete douche bag and that this so-called school is such a pathetic indoctrination camp for the Christian right. As a result of our attempts to buck your ham-handed attempts to shut down any semblence of free speech on campus, we have all been offerred full scholarships at real schools where we will get a real, fact-based education. Enjoy being the big frog in your ever shinking pond, you fascist numbskull. Toodles.

yours in Jesus

The former members and faculty advisors of the Liberty University Democrats

Meat is meat and this is simply a matter of cultural differences. Different people in different parts of the world eat or avoid different kinds of animal protein for all kinds of cultural and religious reasons. Try getting a bacon sandwich in Islamabad or Tel Aviv, or stewed dog in Philadelphia or jugged moose in Timbuktu or Okinawa-style horse sashimi in Cincinatti, or whale meat in London. Try asking for rabbit in Tokyo or a nice sirloin in New Delhi.

Some societies have culinary cultural prejudices that are so strong that they don't eat any meat. Many individuals have adopted vegetarianism on health or ethical grounds and more power to them, but for a lot of people on this planet a vegetarian diet is not only impractical, but nigh impossible. You can't live on vegetables in a place that can't grow a sufficient quantity of them and so for people in the far North, vegetarianism isn't really an option. The Inuit and the Lapp have survived for millenia on meat - fish, caribou, reindeer, whale, seal, hare - you name it - if it swims or runs, its edible and there isn't much else edible in the far north.

People, historically, have eaten what was available to them in most societies. At the same time, our various societies have evolved certain prejudices about eating companion animals or those that we consider unclean for religious reasons often based on bronze age sanitary conditions, when a bad clam could mean life or death. Other religious restrictions require animals to be killed in certain ways on the argument that such a method is the most humane. As our culture has become more globalized, these prejudices have either faded and are kept alive strictly as religious traditions or have become more strictly localized and often clung to in the name of tradition. Many Jews and Muslims no longer keep strictly kosher or halal, and dog is not widely eaten outside Korea as far as I know. Most Japanese no longer eat whale except as a sort of delicacy, while it used to be part of the school lunch menu for a variety of economic reasons.

But a new kind of prejudice has emerged as people have gotten farther from first hand experience with the food they eat, especially in the developed world. We don't like to see where those hamburgers and chicken fingers come from. We don't like to acknowledge the realities of the factory farm, the feedlot and veal pen. We like the sausage just fine, but we don't want to see how its made. We like the steak, but we don't want to see the slaughterhouse.

And so many condemn hunting as barbaric. They see no need to for people to go out into the woods and shoot Peter Cottontail or Bambi's mom when one can go to the supermarket and get slices of Wilbur and Babe wrapped in cellophane on nice anticeptic styrofoam trays. We don't like to eat anything cute - rabbit, deer, squirrel and yes, seal - all fall into this category.

I'll agree that buying your feedlot fattened beef and factory farmed chicken at the supermarket is a more efficient way of getting animal protein than hunting deer. I'll even specify that the majority of hunters in North America don't need to hunt to put groceries on the table. I'll even put aside all the "wildlife management" models that are used to argue the need for culling animal populations to avoid animal starvation based on the notion of man replacing natural predators. I'll also put aside the issue of fur for the moment.

I won't put aside the simplistic "all meat is murder" argument beloved by some, because frankly it's complete bullshit. Mother Nature is red of tooth and claw, and we are part of nature. Man would not have survived the stone age, nor flourished as we have, without eating meat. Animals eat each other and for all our strivings and philosophy, we are part of the food chain. I'll admit we eat too much meat these days and treat animals badly on the whole, but anything that walks or swims or crawls is a meal for something else in the long run, circle of life, ashes to ashes etc etc.

Which bring us back to the seal hunt and Canada's Governor General Michaelle Jean. The objection seems to be that she ate a cute little seal, the ones with the faces like puppies and the big sad eyes, and she ate it's heart! raw! Oh noes! Icky! -- and those nasty Canadians go out and massacre poor helpless baby seals for fun and profit in the cruelest ways imaginable! It must be true, because I saw it in a PETA brochure. All that video footage you've seen of Newfies and Eskimos killing baby seals looks bad and is great for raising funds, but most of it is no worse than what goes on in any other abattoir.

I don't always agree with Penn Jillette - in fact I think he's often guilty of selective use of the facts to prove points that conform with his own beliefs, but Penn and Teller raise some interesting questions about PETA here -- though I think they do a severe disservice to their own arguments by allowing Dennis Prager and Ted Nugent on camera.

The extremists of PETA who want to "free" pets and domestic animals don't do any favors for the cause of protecting animals who actually need protecting. I agree that there should be limits on testing things on animals, but I'd rather things like AIDS drugs were tested on rats than humans. If we are going to have chemical cosmetics, they have to be tested for safety and I'd rather they were tested on animals than humans. Animal experiments are a vital and necessary part of medical research and there are millions of people alive today who would be dead if it weren't for scientists sacrificing the lives of a lot of rats, rabbits, dogs and monkeys.

Whether Canada needs a commercial seal hunt is an open question, but the hunt wouldn't exist if people weren't buying sealskins. Whether the commercial hunt is any more or less humane than the poultry, beef or pork industries is not in question. There is virtually no difference. And Michaelle Jean was joining Inuit subsistence hunters for a meal. And there is no grounds I can see for criticism of the Inuit for hunting seal for food -- there aren't a lot of grocery stores up in the Arctic Circle

So if you want to go full PETA and eschew the use of animals in any way, be my guest. Stop wearing leather and eating meat and eggs and dairy - and stop using modern medicine and modern materials such as mylar that involve the use of animal products. You should also be aware that destruction of habitat is the real threat to most animal species, so stop using roads and living in cities or even wood or concrete structures and get yourself a nice unheated cave somewhere. You have the right to make that decision of conscience, but so do other people and our decision may not be the same as yours. Humans as a species have eaten meat and worn skins since the dawn of time, I don't expect we will stop anytime soon just because a few people get a bit squeamish. The outrage over Michaelle Jean sampling some seal is in large part misguided, misinformed, arrogant and hypocritical.

I always thought that when people said "count the silverware" when the government changed hands, that it was just an expression of general mistrust, not something to be taken literally.Silly me, I forgot we were talking about Stephen Harper and Co.

Now let's just break that paragraph down one bit at time and I'll see if I can translate it for you:

"Over on the left wing(those who oppose me are all communists)of the president's party(no real Republican would object to what we did)there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists(The ends justify the means and torture worked, it saved lives-- no really it did, nevermind all those people who argue otherwise--but our opponents don't care, they are just playing 'gotcha'). The kind of answers they're after(they don't care about the truth, they just want something that would make us look bad) would be heard before a so-called(it wouldn't be the truth)"Truth Commission." Some are even demanding that those who recommended and approved the interrogations be prosecuted(the reverse Nuremberg defense- I'm not responsible for what happened, I was only giving the orders), in effect treating political disagreements(ordering torture and other violations of the law and Constitution are merely partisan politics)as a punishable offense (they are being vicious and vindictive and want to hurt me, help!) , and political opponents(war criminals are merely people with whom the left disagree)as criminals. It's hard to imagine a worse precedent(oh noes! people will be held responsible for their actions), filled with more possibilities for trouble and abuse(if we start prosecuting people for torture and war crimes, who knows where this whole 'punishing people for breaking the law' thing could go? My buddies at Haliburton could be next) , than to have an incoming administration criminalize(ordering people to be tortured, some of them to death, was not a crime, it wasn't! its only a crime because the Democrats say it is, despite 200 years of law that says otherwise )the policy decisions(actual crimes)of its predecessors.

The real reason that the former vice president has been all over the TV and newspapers lately is not so much about securing his place in history as it is securing his place outside of the dock in the Hague.

Look, I don't think anyone will argue that the 9/11 attacks were not a horrible thing. Nearly 3,000 people died and that is pretty goddamn awful. But, rightwing pantspisser pronouncements to the contrary, it didn't change anything. The law is still the law. The worst crimes perpetrated do not allow us to ignore the law when it comes to catching and punishing the perpetrators. The Manson Family murders did not give the police the right to shoot suspected Beatles fans on sight.Just because you're scared shitless doesn't mean you can do anything you want. The notion that "the end does not justify the means" is not just some collegiate philosophy 101 bit of theory, it is pretty much the basis of western law, along with that whole "innocent until proven guilty" thing and "habeas corpus" -- but then again, I suppose those were ignored or suspended too during the Cheney regime.